


dreaming of sadness in the dead of the night

by ohvictor



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: ...vaguely, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 20:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19893514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohvictor/pseuds/ohvictor
Summary: Azuma struggles to sleep after a round of nightmares. Sakyo has a lullaby in mind.





	dreaming of sadness in the dead of the night

**Author's Note:**

> in [this magazine, translated on the wiki](https://yaycupcake.com/a3/index.php?title=Girl%27s_Berry/2017_Winter_Issue), azuma jokes about how he and sakyo should try being roommates, since they are both adults and both like to drink. i... took this and ran with it. i also wanted to write more azuma hurt/comfort, so i ended up combining the two into this. the only canon divergence here is that they are roommates, which doesn't happen in canon. timeline-wise, this is roughly post-part 1, pre-part 2. 
> 
> i've slapped a teen rating on this since it's azuma pov and it alludes to (canon) family trauma; the beginning includes fairly frank description of nightmares, so please be careful! title is taken once again from [azuma's solo song](https://yaycupcake.com/a3/index.php?title=Gekkoujou_no_Aria). thank you to goomba server as always for my life.

Azuma jerks awake for the third time that night. 

His chest is heaving, and his eyes burn as he pries them open; not that there’s much to see now, just the dark ceiling and the soft slopes of his blankets. The frantic push-pull of his breathing is too loud in this silent space, filling the darkness with the wrong sort of panting. Azuma brings his hands to his mouth, hoping to muffle the sound a little, and finds his fingers shaking too badly to be much cover. 

This is such a nuisance, he thinks, as he lays there in the dark, tangled up in bedsheets, his heart beating so fast he can feel it rattling in his throat. The nightmare is the same as always, always, and after so many years he should be numb to the same old scare, except he isn’t, and. He knows _why_ , of course. The anniversary of their deaths is this weekend, and Azuma’s always been bad with anniversaries, bad at forgetting them. Even if he knows the reason, and it hasn’t _stopped_ hurting, even after so many years, he’s allowed to find it frustrating, right? Well... Even if he’s not allowed, it’s still frustrating. 

From here, he can’t see the clock unless he sits up and strains his neck. The world outside is still dark, judging by the lack of natural light in the bedroom. Somehow, he’s managed to wake up like this, calm back down, and fall asleep again twice already. Azuma presses two fingers to the side of his neck and finds his pulse is already slowing to something manageable. He’s gotten very good at this pathetic charade; wake up panicking, take stock of his body, wait for it to work itself out. Being frustrated helps. If he treats it like something small and irritating, it’s more manageable. 

As his breaths grow quieter, he becomes aware that the room’s silence isn’t usual. Sakyo isn’t a loud snorer, but he’s not a silent sleeper either; fortunately, Azuma doesn’t mind snoring. It’s comforting, a reminder that someone else is there. Usually, someone else asleep, who hates being woken up. 

Ah. Azuma might be in for a lecture now, if Sakyo has the energy to lecture at whatever hour it is. Trick question! Sakyo is always up for a lecture. (It’s a charm point.)

As quietly as he can, Azuma pushes himself up from his pillow and inches toward the divider between his and Sakyo’s beds. His blankets, twisted around his legs, travel amiably with him. As soon as the shuffling sounds make it clear that Azuma’s moving, he hears a grumble from the other bed, and his chest pangs with guilt. He did wake Sakyo, after all. 

“Getting up, Yukishiro?” Sakyo’s voice is hoarse from sleep; it sounds nice, Azuma thinks selfishly. 

“No,” Azuma whispers. “I wanted to see if you were up.”

“As you can see,” Sakyo says, and yawns. Azuma can see his silhouette in the dark; he’s got one arm thrown over his face, as if shielding his eyes. 

“Did I wake you up?” Azuma asks. 

He expects Sakyo to lash out in response, something like _of course_ , but Sakyo just says, “Sounds like you’re having more trouble sleeping than I am.”

“Aha...” Azuma retreats back into his blankets, wrapping himself in more securely before answering. “Maybe.”

“Don't lie. You’ve woken up a few times already, right?” Sakyo doesn’t mince words when he’s tired, either. “I heard you.”

Guilt settles in Azuma’s stomach like a stone thrown into a pond. “Ah... I'm sorry for waking you up.”

“Don’t apologize,” Sakyo says, with only a hint of his usual bite. “Have you calmed down?” 

Azuma squirms in his blanket cocoon to free one hand, and checks his pulse in his neck again. “Mm... Mostly.”

“That’s good.”

“I think I’ll head to sleep now after all.” Azuma can’t reach Sakyo from here, so he pats the divider between their beds instead as if comfortingly patting Sakyo’s arm. “With any luck, I’ll sleep on ’til morning this time.”

“Hmm.” 

The other bed shifts and groans as Sakyo gets into a sitting position. Azuma can see the rough silhouette of Sakyo in the darkness, his pajama shirt hanging off one shoulder and his hair rumpled. Sakyo’s expression is difficult to make out in the dark, but when he scoots closer to the divider between the beds, Azuma can see Sakyo’s frowning.

“Back when you were working,” Sakyo says, “if a client had a nightmare, what would you do?”

The question catches Azuma off-guard, but he manages not to show it on his face. Instead, he tips his head to one side, looking innocently back at Sakyo. “Are you trying to figure out what _you_ should do now?”

“Maybe,” Sakyo says. He must truly be too tired to argue. He hesitates a moment, mid-movement, and then starts to haul himself across the barrier between the beds.

“Sakyo-kun?” Azuma breathes, but even as he’s surprised, he’s instinctively shifting back to give Sakyo room on the bed. Sakyo’s movements are clumsy from sleep, but he manages to get his whole body across the divider and onto Azuma’s bed. Once on Azuma’s bed, Sakyo blinks, and rubs his eyes. 

“Lay down,” he instructs Azuma.

If it wasn’t the middle of the night, and if he wasn’t already causing Sakyo a massive inconvenience, Azuma might have teased. But there’s something final in Sakyo’s tone that makes Azuma’s retort die on his tongue, and he flops back against his pillows with a soft sigh, obeying. 

Sakyo crawls forward on the mattress, curling himself into the space left between Azuma and one side of the bed. He’s not spooning Azuma or even cuddling — perhaps he’s too stiff for such a thing — but he does shift so that his hip touches Azuma’s. Lying on his back, Sakyo looks up at the ceiling, barely invading Azuma’s space except for the entire fact that he is in Azuma’s bed.

“Try and relax,” he says gruffly. 

Azuma’s breath catches in his throat, and he’s not sure how to respond — it would be rude to tease when Sakyo is being kind, but he can’t accept something like this, can he? Sakyo is so genuinely trying to help him, even when Azuma is the one robbing him of sleep. Sakyo shouldn’t even be here; they only share a room because Azuma asked so many times. The more he thinks about it, the guilt in his gut builds into something corrosive. He turns his face away so he can’t see Sakyo anymore, and fights not to let any panic show in his voice when he responds. 

“I am the sleeping partner here... Former sleeping partner, but nonetheless.” His tone is light enough. Azuma tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, pointless since Sakyo probably can’t see the details of his person in the dark and without his glasses. Still, if he looks more put-together, perhaps he will feel more put-together, too. “Isn’t it embarrassing that you’re the one who has to take care of me? And besides, I already...”

Whatever he was going to say, whatever shameful excuse he had, catches in his throat as he feels a hand in his hair that’s not his own. He doesn’t dare breathe as Sakyo’s fingers card through his hair, his blunt fingertips a dull pressure on his scalp that’s firm enough to stop his thoughts for a moment. Sakyo smoothes Azuma’s hair back from his forehead, his motions clumsy from sleep but practiced, as if he handles long hair often. Perhaps he has a girlfriend Azuma doesn’t know about? Or takes care of his mother or another relative? It’s not as though Azuma knows everything about Sakyo. Questions, too, stick to his tongue. 

When Sakyo withdraws his hand, Azuma realizes he’s no longer panicking. He takes a deep breath, intending to say something genuine, to thank Sakyo, but what comes out is, “What was that for?”

“To calm you down.” Sakyo turns his head so Azuma can see his expression. His mouth is turned up in the corner, a self-satisfied half-smile. 

“Ah...” Azuma wants to kiss him. It’s not the time. “Well...”

“Lay down again.” Sakyo turns away, and Azuma hears him yawn. “I’ll sing to you.”

“You’ll sing to me?” Azuma blurts out. “Sakyo-kun, I don’t need...”

“Let me do it for myself, then.” There’s a trace of Sakyo’s usual scowl in his voice now. “This brat I used to look after sometimes... He slept like a baby if I sung to him. You wanna pretend you’re younger than me, right? Maybe it’ll work on you too.”

Azuma wonders if he’s just learned something secret. In this space, in his dark bed in the middle of the night, it feels like the perfect place to reveal something like that. He doesn't answer Sakyo right away, instead praying that he’ll remember this in the morning. He feels awake enough right now, but he knows his body is exhausted. 

“All right,” he agrees at last. “I hear you have a lovely voice, after all.”

“Hah?” Sakyo suddenly sounds more awake. “Who said that?”

“Omi, when your troupe went to karaoke last month.” Azuma’s not supposed to tease right now, but he can’t help himself. “I’ve been hoping I would be there for the encore.”

“It’s not polite to gossip.” There’s no bite in Sakyo’s tone, though; Azuma thinks maybe he’s pleased to have been praised. “Well? If you keep talking, I’ll fall back asleep and you won’t get any encore.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll be good now.” Azuma puts his hand over his own mouth for emphasis, even if Sakyo can barely see it in the dark. 

Sakyo huffs, a sound more affirmation than displeasure. “Good.” 

He waits a moment, perhaps making sure Azuma is really going to be quiet. Azuma repositions his legs under the blanket, reminding himself to relax his muscles. He hears Sakyo take a deep breath, filling his lungs. 

Then Sakyo starts to sing. His voice is soft, minding the late hour, but he holds the melody solidly. After a few words, Azuma recognizes the song. It’s one he knows but has forgotten the name of, an older song that used to play on the radio when he was younger. There’s no particular emotional attachment besides that, so it’s not painful to remember it. 

Perhaps Sakyo chose it because they’re both old enough to know it, or maybe Sakyo likes it specifically. As he continues through the verse and then the chorus, it’s clear he knows all of the words, although Azuma doesn’t remember them himself, so if Sakyo misremembered or made some lyrics up Azuma wouldn’t notice. It would be rude to interrupt Sakyo in the middle of the song, and somehow Azuma feels he should be quiet and allow Sakyo to sing until Azuma can fall asleep again, but he wants to ask what the song is, what it means to Sakyo. There’s so much he wants to save to remember in the morning — there’s no way of being sure he will. 

The quiet song fills the dark space between them, the bed, and the ceiling of the bedroom. Sakyo finishes the chorus and moves on to the next verse. Omi and the rest of Autumn were right; Sakyo does have a lovely voice. It’s higher than his speaking voice (or maybe that’s just the song he chose), but he can hit all of the notes well, even the ones that stretch the bounds of his vocal range. More than that, he’s able to keep his volume constant. The song is not written as a lullaby, but Sakyo’s soft voice turns it into the perfect one.

It’s relaxing. Azuma is concentrating on the sound, trying to commit this to memory, but he finds his focus slipping as he listens, missing a word or two, then a whole phrase. He yawns, dragging his hand up to cover his mouth, and then yawns again, too sleepy to cover up this time. 

( _By the time the song ends and Sakyo starts another one, Yukishiro’s breathing deeply, his inhales laced with the ghost of a snore. Sakyo makes it through the first verse and chorus of the second song, and then stops. That should do it, he thinks._

 _Maybe it’s Yukishiro’s natural sleeping partner power, but Sakyo is growing sleepy easily himself._ )

When Azuma opens his eyes next, the bedroom is lit with sunlight, saturating the room through the thin curtain over the window. There’s a song stuck in his head, one he hasn’t heard since he was a kid. He blinks at the ceiling, and starts to move, but his arm connects with something warm and solid, and he’s wide awake in an instant. 

With his head on the pillow beside him is Sakyo, still asleep as far as Azuma can tell. His blond bangs are a feathery mess across his forehead, and his mouth hangs slightly open, exposing a flash of teeth. He’s not snoring, but when Azuma listens, he can hear the deep pull of Sakyo’s breaths. 

Memories of the previous night bubble up like water from a spring. He remembers waking up from a nightmare and crawling to see into Sakyo’s bed; he remembers Sakyo climbing into Azuma’s bed, and singing him to sleep. Just recalling this makes Azuma’s cheeks burn, and he brings his hands up to cover them, moving carefully so as not to wake Sakyo. It’s not as if he forced Sakyo to take care of him, but the fact that Sakyo did anyway... And that Azuma kept Sakyo awake, and not in a cool or sexy way, but because of Azuma’s own weakness... He wants to jump in the shower and scrub these memories away. He also wants to wake Sakyo up and thank him before the chance to talk about last night slips away. 

... Both of those can wait, though. Azuma settles back down, tugging the blankets up to his chin. If Sakyo is asleep in his bed, his warmth seeping into the blankets, surely it’s all right for Azuma to catch a little more sleep at his side. It’s not as though he hasn’t already embarrassed himself in front of Sakyo. 

Besides, the gentle sound of Sakyo’s breathing already has Azuma half-asleep again. 

**Author's Note:**

> "so are you only writing ventfic now" apparently, lol. hmu on [twitter](http://twitter.com/futarinoshoutai) o/


End file.
